ght.' 'Well,' said he, 'that is queer,
though, for I haven't wept since I was a boy. It's true, though,
that I had a miserable dream.' But when he tried to remember it, he
could not.

"The same thing happened on the second night, only the dead wife
said:"

'Wife and babe below the river,
Once will I come and then come never.'

"And again in the morning there was a mark on the pillow where her wet
hand had rested. But the Prince in the morning could remember
nothing. On the third night she came and said:"

'Wife and babe below the river,
Now I am gone and gone for ever,'

"And went down the stairs with such a reproachful look at John that
his heart melted and he ran after her. But at the outer door a flash
of lightning met him, and such a storm broke over the palace and city
as had never been before and never will be again.

"John heard screams, and the noise of doors banging and feet running
throughout the palace; he turned back and met the Prince, his master,
coming downstairs with his child in his arms. The lightning stroke
had killed his second wife where she lay. John followed him out into
the streets, where the people were running to and fro, and through
the whirling sand to the ford which crossed the creek a mile above
the city. And there, as they stepped into the water, a woman rose
before John, with a child in her arms, and said: 'Carry us.'
The Prince, who was leading, did not see. John took them on his
back, but they were heavy because of the iron chains and weights on
their ankles, and the sands sank under him. Then, by-and-by, the
first wife put her child into John's arms and said, 'Save him,' and
slipped off his back into the water. 'What sound was that?' asked
the Prince. 'That was my heart cracking,' said John. So they went
on till the sand rose half-way to their knees. Then the Prince
stopped and put his child into John's arms. 'Save him,' he said, and
fell forward on his face; and John's heart cracked again. But he
went forward in the darkness until the water rose to his waist, and
the sand to his knees. He was close to the farther shore now, but
could not reach it unless he dropped one of the children; and this he
would not do. He bent forward, holding out one in each arm, and
could just manage to push them up the bank and prop them there with
his open hand; and while he bent, the tide rose and his heart cracked
for the third time. Though he was de